Based on the MDG target to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people, the present guide elaborates on the concepts of productive employment and its antonym, deficits of productive employment. It provides a guide to estimating current and past deficits in productive employment and on how established targets for reducing poverty and unemployment can be used to derive targets for productive employment generation. Such targets, in their turn, may be used to inform economic and social policies as well as to assess policy coherence from the perspective of achieving productive employment for all and reduce poverty.